This novel, A Promising Future (Salamandra), the sixth of his project and the third focused on the Pelletier family, takes us to 1959, the core of what in France they call the Trente Glorieuses - the period of great European economic boom after World War II, between 1945 and 1975 - an optimistic and carefree era where capitalism and faith in progress reigned, the Cold War and nuclear fear were common currency, and society began to show the yearnings for openness that would culminate in the major global protests of 1968. It was also the era in which the outlines of our uncertain present began to take shape.
"Looking at those 50s and 60s with current eyes, it is easy to have the impression that France and all of Europe were in a rather naive, innocent, happy adolescence, as if the future did not exist. We were happy to have left the dark past behind and we lived in a kind of unconsciousness, imagining that this state could last forever," analyzes Lemaitre, who believes that those central decades of the 20th century, strange as it may sound, are the last page of the 19th century. "That nineteenth-century era of the Industrial Revolution is marked by a naive confidence in progress, in technology, and in the future, something that persisted until almost the 70s and that serves as a border with the arrival of a voracious neoliberalism that dominates our current era," reflects the writer, who asserts: "we did not realize to what extent those years would condition today."
"Thinking about those years of strong tensions between the USSR and the USA, it is crazy to see how current geopolitics seems to have turned upside down"
A present that seems to have regressed several decades, he ironically points out when recalling that key aspects of 70 years ago such as the bloc conflict that was the Cold War, the fear of a nuclear attack, or colonialism, which we considered things of the past, are now of vital importance today. "Thinking about those years of strong tensions between the USSR and the USA, it is crazy to see how in current geopolitics everything seems to have turned upside down," states the writer. "It's a shame that Donald Trump is in politics because he is an immense scriptwriter who has incredible theatrical moves that no writer could imagine. When Philip Roth wrote The Plot Against America, everyone thought it was literature, but even that novel was relatively sensible compared to the enormous delirium in which we have been living for the past few months."
Translation by José Antonio Soriano. Salamandra. 560 pages. 24 Ebook: 12.99 You can buy it here.
If in the two previous novels of the saga, The Wide World and The Silence and the Anger, the protagonists were Éttiene and Hélène, two of the four Pelletier siblings, in A Promising Futurethe bulk of the action, set in 1959, focuses on François, a successful journalist specializing in television reports who, following a trip to communist Czechoslovakia, becomes involved in a vibrant espionage plot. "I believe that intelligence services represent the unconscious of Western societies, they direct society in the background, and when they come to light, it is due to a slip," explains Lemaitre, who admits that it was very amusing to conceive a spy novel indebted, he acknowledges, to Simenon and especially to John le Carré. "Although sometimes their intrigues were so complicated that after 300 pages, they no longer knew what they were talking about," he jokes. "Over the years, I realized that the plot was not important, what matters is to maintain intrigue and introduce other themes into it."
For example, the fear of a nuclear attack or accident, a possibility that no longer sounds so remote, but which has been an unpleasant discovery for the writer. "What surprised me when researching the real nuclear accidents that appear in the book is that governments that were antagonists, the UK and the USSR, implicitly agreed to hide from the population what was happening," he acknowledges. "In retrospect, it is something that alarms me. For years, even after Chernobyl, the rulers of France had the audacity to tell us that the cloud would stop at the border, just as today they are easing tensions. That is, today they take us for fools just like they did 70 years ago."
French writer Pierre Lemaitre last week in Bordeaux.THIBAUD MORITZ
The criticism of political power in the novel comes from the world of journalism, "an actor in its own right and another character in the novel," points out Lemaitre, who traces its complex evolution through François, "a witness to the rise of mass journalism and successive technological advances" and very critical of its dependence on the Government. "In those years in France, even more than today, information was extraordinarily dependent on politics. François says it at one point: 'we are like the power's sounding board, we are not independent journalists'."
"Today we are paying for the mistakes and naive optimism of the post-war years, and retrospectively, it is a cruel lesson"
Also, economic power, embodied in Jean, the fourth brother, a successful entrepreneur and protagonist of the fourth novel that closes the tetralogy - which Lemaitre has already written and will publish in the coming months - receives a reprimand. "In those years, capitalism had no adversary, only a communist bloc where life was worse, so it was accepted naively, uncritically. And it is understandable, as there was hardly any unemployment, the standard of living was increasing by leaps and bounds... But the big problem with capitalism is not that it wants to make money, but its short-termism, whose effects we feel today," reflects the writer.
"It is a great paradox that this system that managed to guarantee the population's happiness has now caused environmental disaster, exemplified in unbridled construction, for example, and a great social fracture resulting from the progressive cruelty towards the working classes. Now we are paying for the mistakes and naive optimism of the post-war years, and retrospectively, it is a cruel lesson."
Despite the millions of copies sold about the history of France, this former Literature professor is cautious about the power of books to change society. "The need for fiction is intrinsic to human nature; however, I believe that no fiction has changed or will be able to change the world. There are certain books like the Bible, the Quran, or even Das Kapital by Marx that have had that power, but novels have not," he insists firmly. "However," he corrects himself with a smile, "literature does serve to mobilize imaginaries. Book after book, fiction after fiction, each of us is forging tools to understand reality."
"Literature does not have the power to change the world, but fiction after fiction, readers are forging tools to understand reality"
The same role he gives to history, because he believes that although "the past allows us to understand how we got here, it has no predictive power. The future is unpredictable, that's why comparisons with the 1930s are of no use to us today," he acknowledges. "The example, again, is Trump. He was four years in power and we already knew he was. All through the campaign, he said what he was going to do, and in one month, he's changed the face of the world, he's the spearhead of an incredibly violent change and we're all shocked, as if no one had seen it coming."
In a few months, when the fourth part comes out, Lemaitre will reach his goal of reaching the 1970s, but he does not yet know if he will be encouraged to complete the last decades of the 20th century with more novels. "If I listen to my cardiologist, the prognosis is to stay there," he says ironically. "I'm 74 years old and I don't know if I should embark on three more novels. If I could make it to the end, there would be 10 books, 5,000 pages of French history, but I don't know if I'll be able to at 80. Besides, all my life I've been a campaigner in favor of retiring at 60, so I'm in a little bit of a complicated position," he concludes, smiling.